Abstract:

The purpose of this article is to say as much as possible about the Hungarian
"Objective Conjugation". Hungarian verbs inflect not only for tense, mood, and
subject person and number, but also according to certain features of the direct object
In the bulk of the cases where this phenomenon is relevant, the verb inflects differently
according to whether or not the DO is a "definite" NP. In the latter case, the verb draws
from a set of inflective endings collectively called the Objective Conjugation, hereafter
referred to as OC. Various theories for what triggers DC endings, as welt as theories
on Object pro-drop licenced by said endings, will be described. The article will also
explore the degree to which the DC morphology fuses with subject-inflective endings
on the verb. Throughout, prominent theories will be peppered with the author's own
opinionated viewpoints. I sincerely hope that, after reading this article, the reader will
get a flavor for why this is such an interesting set of questions for linguists studying
Hungarian, and for linguistics in general.